Draft - Earth-Bicentennial

Recommended Posts

On July 4, 1976, an atomic bomb detonated in Freedom City during the city’s Bicentennial Celebration. The blast, centered at Freedom Hall, killed most of the Freedom League - along with a visiting President Gerald Ford. The subsequent Twelve-Hour War with the Soviet Union was far less deadly than many might have predicted - but still killed tens of millions of people and eliminated many of the surviving metahumans of North America. The winter was cold, and hard - and people starved to death in the streets.

In the chaos of the year that followed, the largest single group of surviving metahumans turned out to be the Crime League - and between their command of hidden caches of resources, their fantastic powers, and their organization, they were able to assume leadership first of the recovery efforts - then of the entire United States. On July 4, 1978, the Last Amendment to the Constitution divided up the territories of the former United States among the members of the League: and the era of Neo-Feudalism began.

The decades since have been a period of consolidation - some realms have fallen and others have grown, consolidating the fallen territories of other League members, conquering the occasional free state, or giving way to the rise of a newcomer.

In 2017, the borders of North America can be found on any map... but they are also in flux...

The Dinosaur Coast:
Capital: The Emerald Cities

The newest member of the League, Cerberus Rex controls much of what used to be the west coast of the United States and Canada. His techno-dinosaurid empire arose only in the last half-decade, conquering what had been a variety of independent baronies. His human subjects dislike their second-class citizen status under his rule - but they have few likely champions.

Visuals: Towers of glass and steel, cyborg raptors with laser guns, loyal humans branded with a CR living in ‘gated communities’ - disloyal ones living wild in the hills and sometimes hunted.

The Shadow Lands:
Capital: Salt Lake City, Utah

Though technically a collection of independent baronies ruled by various members of the Penumbra, everyone knows that the real master of the Shadow Lands is Overshadow himself, who from his seat of power in Salt Lake City (it amused him to take the Salt Lake Temple as his own) is the lord and master (albeit by proxy) of territory stretching from the Sierra Nevadas to the Rocky Mountains.

Now occupying a new, vital clone body, Parker Psion sits at the top of the New Humanity - a transformed human race where everyone is equal from the Dakotas to the Mexican border. Never mind the fates of those whose bodies rejected the uplifts - the lucky ones assigned to remote oil wells and other installations out of public view, never mind the mass graves of those who died of it. Never mind the fates of those whose genes were not simply weak but outright inferior - never mind the mass graves, never mind the camps! Parker Psion and his scions will ensure that you only mind what you should.

Visuals: High-tech architecture, beautiful people of all races and colors, people in Psion colors flying in the skies, etc. Children smiling as wrongthink books are burned.

The Clockwork Kingdom:
Capital: Bedlam City, Wisconsin

Under pressure from the expansionists to their west, the Clockwork Kingdom has been in the process of transition. What was once a “let the good times roll” hive of scum and villany under the indifferent, nay, negligent rule of Anna Cline and her son Richard has become more organized in recent years, recruiting other metas and reorganizing to give them the forces they need to keep their independence. Richard Cline’s wife Paige is the one of the few defectors from the Psion inner circle - and may be the most powerful psychic in North America not conditioned to loyalty to her father.

VIsuals: Decaying 1970s Rust Belt architecture, a general feeling of shabbiness. Troops drilling on the streets, armed baselines and metas alike, frequent anti-infiltrator drills. Golden statues of Clock Queen and Tempus Fugitive that no one has bothered to polish in a few years.

Great Heliopolis:
Capital: Memphis, TN

It was all going to be so beautiful! Horus in chains, his mortal allies dead (or even better, fled) and the Southeastern United States belonging to Set the Destroyer to reshape in his image, millions to make into a new class of nobles and peasants! It amused Set even to set her capital in Memphis, a river city with a pyramid. And things were beautiful, at first! But the gates of Heliopolis remain closed to him and Horus, in his prison, remains stubbornly unbroken. There was a resistance movement for a while but now it is largely broken - and Set sits on her throne still.

Visuals: Neo-Egyptian architecture and clothing mixed with high technology, convict labor on plantations, temples to Set in her many aspects everywhere, a desert gradually spreading outwards from Memphis.

New Lemuria:
Capital: New Orleans, LA

The Serpent People and Deep Ones who control the Gulf Coast of North America keep to themselves - having expelled or killed most of the humans who live in their new territory, they can afford to do so. Their focus is on the sea, and the ever-present war with the remaining forces of Atlantis in the Gulf of Mexico. But a new generation, born after the Bicentennial, has come of age recently and makes new arguments and sings new songs of Dagon and Hydra - perhaps their chosen home is on the land that they seek to reclaim, not beneath the waves?

Visuals: Cyclopean architecture built over the ruins of human cities, rhythmic guttural chanting, obscene rituals, happy frog and serpent children, blood sacrifice, flooded streets and valleys that never seem to get dry. The smell of raw meat.

01:
Capital: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

At the far edge of North America, Talos is sitting pretty - his machine empire has found that trading with the surviving nations of Europe is as profitable as trading with his erstwhile North American allies. (After all, aren’t all organics the same on the inside when you get down to it?) He’s even opened his doors to the stars and turned his little corner of the globe into a free port - profitable indeed now that the Grue and Lor have warred each other to near-mutual extinction and the laws of space aren’t as enforced as they once were. It’s good to be the king.

Visual: Armies of skeletal robot troopers, automated gunships flying overhead - humans living wild in hills and forests. Aliens in the large cities, mostly those who are distinctly non-human, and exotic goods and devices. The head of Daedalus, still living, atop Talos’s scepter.